Ethan – Part 4 of 5

Ethan is the youngest of Matthew and Christina’s children at 4 years old.  He’s a going concern – I was tempted to use a superhero theme but I didn’t want to encourage any more “flying” attempts.  I settled on a racecar theme using  fall colors.  I love, love, love this picture of Ethan – he seems to be clasping his hands in an attempt to keep himself still! 

Now, for those of you that have an interest in the techniques used… 

• I used the transfer technique described April 6th to begin. 
• Then I applied all of the paint using black, transparent red iron oxide, green gold, and quinacridone crimson.  I kept the painting loose everywhere except for the black track. 
• I printed and cut out the clipart cars and decided on their placement.  I had one challenge before the transfer would work – the cars wouldn’t show up on the black track.  I thought about painting the shapes of the cars onto the track in white but that’s pretty tedious.  Instead, I painted titanium white directly onto the car shapes just before I heat transferred them.  The white was trapped between the two layers of the gel medium and it made a great backdrop for the colors of the cars. 
• After I rubbed the paper backings off the transfers I touched up the black paint, stamped Ethan’s name, and used some white conte to provide highlights on the tires and lighten parts of the track.

I hope you all had a great Easter – He is risen indeed!